An integral aspect of daily life is the use of motor vehicles to transport people from one location to another location. Changes in local economies and housing prices have compelled many people to live further from where they work, shop, or seek entertainment. This means that the number of vehicle miles traveled by motorists in many states and cities continue to climb year after year.
Efforts have been made by many states to enhance the speed, efficiency, and convenience of modern road systems. Motor vehicles have also become safer. Despite these efforts, however, roughly 30,000 people die in vehicle accidents in the United States each year in addition to 2 million other injuries arising from the more than 10 million vehicle accidents reported annually.
Vehicle accident scenes are very dangerous, because they represent a stationary obstacle amidst oncoming vehicles travelling at high speeds. Police officers, sheriff deputies, and state troopers are usually the first responders to arrive upon the accident scene. In addition to taking care of traumatized injured drivers and passengers in the damaged vehicles directly involved in the accident, they must set up the initial security perimeter aimed at diverting oncoming motorists safely around the accident scene. This can be very dangerous to law enforcement personnel, as well as other safety responders like ambulances, paramedics, and tow trucks. These dangers are further compounded by darkness and inclement weather. Each year in the U.S. alone, millions of law enforcement officers and first responders risk their lives working on roads, and thousands are injured or die each year in the process.
Many states have enacted “move over” laws that require drivers to slow down or change lanes to move away from stopped emergency vehicles. While these laws are meant to enhance the safety of accident scenes, too many law enforcement officers and other emergency responders are injured or die due to reckless, inattentive, or impaired incoming motorists approaching the accident scene.
It is therefore critical that law enforcement officers and first responders have the necessary equipment to mark the perimeter of an accident scene to warn approaching motorists to stay away. Moreover, it is important that such equipment be deployed in a manner that is safe to the law enforcement officers or first responders. The most basic article of traffic safety marker equipment is the ubiquitous orange cone or pylon. These cones or pylons are portable due to their light weight, and visible over short distances due to their fluorescent orange color. See e.g., U.S. Published Application 2008/0125970 filed by Scheckler. But, they are largely invisible at night, and can easily be blown or knocked over to interfere with their function as a safety hazard marker.
Another common tool used by law enforcement officers and other emergency responders are road-side flares. They constitute sealed containers holding phosphorescent chemicals that can be broken open to ignite the chemicals. The resulting burning fire emits a colored light that is clearly visible at night. While the flares can be dropped along the perimeter of the accident scene by the law enforcement officer, they burn for relatively short time periods, thereby requiring replacement flares to be deployed if the accident scene is not cleared quickly. They also require the law enforcement officer to walk to the edge of the accident scene in the path of rapidly approaching motor vehicles in order to drop the ignited flares onto the pavement.
Electronic flares exist in the market for replacing the traditional chemical-burning phosphorescent flares. U.S. Published Application 2004/0240204 filed by Russ et al. discloses such an electronic flare having a cylindrical housing containing a battery and plurality of light-emitting diode (“LED”) lights positioned around the circumference of the housing. Such a flare merely needs to be turned on via its switch, and can be placed on the ground as a marker. U.S. Published Application 2006/0104054 filed by Coman discloses a dome-shaped flare assembly with a flat bottom and a reflector that disperses light radially. But, these types of electronic flares require manual actuation and deployment along the accident scene pavement, which can be dangerous in the face of high-speed oncoming traffic.
Efforts have also been made to equip law enforcement officers with hand-held light wands that can be used to direct traffic. These devices operate like flash lights except that a transparent tube containing a plurality of battery-powered lights extends from the handle for radiating the light for 360° viewing. The light bulbs can be LED lights for improved visibility. See e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,079,679 issued to Chin-Fa, and U.S. Published Application 2008/0094822 filed by Hsu. A colored reflecting tube surrounding the light bulbs can produce the appearance of colored lights for increased attention by motorists. See U.S. Pat. No. 5,622,423 issued to Lee. Alternatively, colored light bulbs or colored light bulbs in combination with white light bulbs can be employed to create sections of different colors along the light wand. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 2,611,019 issued to Warner; U.S. Pat. No. 5,697,695 issued to Lin et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,865,524 issued to Campman.
But in the case of a roadside accident, it may represent an inefficient use of resources to devote a police officer to waving a hand-held light wand to motion approaching motorists away from the accident scene. In some cases, only one police officer may be present at the accident scene. Therefore, a self-standing light device that can be quickly set up by the policeman on the pavement along the perimeter of the accident scene is more convenient. Thus, the light wand can be attached to a tripod base. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,899,441 issued to Chen; U.S. Pat. No. 7,011,423 also issued to Chen; U.S. Pat. No. 7,063,444 issued to Lee et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,224,271 issued to Wang. See also U.S. Published Applications 2002/0136005 filed by Lee; 2006/0133074 filed by Lai; and 2008/0036584 filed by Lang et al. In many cases, the tripod legs are permanently attached to the light stick portion of the light wand devices. U.S. Pat. No. 4,055,840 issued to Uchytil et al. shows a safety warning device having a housing and pivotal leg in which a battery-powered light source disposed in a reflector to radiate light which is reflected off a plurality of flexible reflective strips creates the visual appearance of a burning incendiary flare.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,684,452 issued to Wang discloses a warning device consisting of a tripod flash light with a pivoting head lamp. Such a portable device can be set up to direct the light source at varying heights. U.S. Pat. No. 7,021,782 issued to Yerian substitutes a ballast-filled base for the tripod legs connected to the light stick portion of the safety marker device to reduce the chances of it blowing over or getting knocked over.
In other embodiments of electronic safety markers, an electronic light stick is structured so that it can be inserted into the top of a standard traffic cone. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 2,949,531 issued to Lemelson; U.S. Pat. No. 5,453,729 issued to Chu; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,577,824 issued to Wright. The traffic cone serves as the base for the light stick unit.
The light source used in safety markers can also flash for added attention and visibility. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,905,622 and 7,997,764 issued to Nielson; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,195,370 issued to Riblett et al.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,754,124 issued to Daggett et al. discloses an electrical hazard warning system comprising a charging base for a couple of transparent, cone-shaped markers containing a light bulb. The electronics are placed in the bottom of the marker to provide ballast for keeping the markers upright when they are positioned on the ground. The charging base can be placed in the trunk of a police car so that the marker devices are readily available for deployment at accident scenes.
Other safety marker devices available in the industry contain a rounded base that is filled with ballast, so that if the device is tipped over, it will stand upright again. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 1,228,615 issued to Stafford; U.S. Pat. No. 5,590,956 issued to Messana et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,808,291 issued to Aylward et al. U.S. Pat. No. 7,030,929 issued to Chang et al. claims to accomplish the same result using an ovate (egg-shaped) housing.
Other electric safety marker devices available in the industry are compact in their storage state. For example, U.S. Published Application 2014/0096712 issued to Houle et al. teaches a hollow tetrahedron with four vortexes formed by connecting rods. The device can be expanded from its collapsed state to its tetrahedral state, and a light positioned on the top vortex allows it to act as a deployable safety marker. U.S. Pat. No. 3,426,343 issued to Carlson discloses a light unit comprising a base containing a battery and a light bulb with a cone-shaped top that can be manually pulled upwards to produce a red colored conical housing that is lit up by the light bulb.
But all of these prior art safety markers require manual actuation and deployment by the police officer or other emergency responder. This can expose the police officer or other emergency responder to the risk of physical injury by oncoming motorists.
Still other safety marker devices are designed for rapid deployment by throwing or dropping them onto the ground. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,128,951 issued to Nicholl shows a substantially spherical shaped housing that is lit up by a light bulb contained inside and can be rolled along the ground. The lamp units are stored in a container, and they automatically light up upon their removal from their container. U.S. Pat. No. 4,480,294 issued to Carboni discloses a cubic lamp box having six identical sides. Light bulbs contained inside the box shine through windows in the housing sides. The light box is thrown along the ground, and when it comes to rest on one of its sides, the lights shine through the resulting side and top windows.
But, because such safety marker devices can roll freely along the ground, they cannot be deployed by the police officer or other emergency responder accurately at a particular location around the accident scene without being manually set in place at the desired location on the ground. Again, this produces the risk of physical injury for the person deploying the safety marker.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,480,115 issued to Ghahramani discloses a mine hazard marker that is deployed on a battlefield by a tank. It comprises a mast head with a flag and spring-actuated legs. When the marker devices is dropped on to the ground by the tank or tank operator, a skid plate impacted by the ground causes the legs to deploy using a mechanical mechanism. No light is associated with this marker device.
Still other safety markers containing LED lights contain radio frequency or infrared receivers. An operator can remotely turn on the lights by transmitting a radio frequency (“RF”) or infrared (“IR”) signal. See e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 7,878,678 issued to Stamatatos et al., and U.S. Published Application 2011/0249430 filed by Stamatatos et al.
Other marker devices can send warning signals or messages. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,952,168 issued to Recko, Jr. et al. teaches an audio module that can be set into the top of a warning cone. The module contains an infrared detector and an associated warning system message. Deployed by a janitor around a wet floor, the device senses an approaching pedestrian, and emits an audible warning message about the potential danger posed by the wet floor. U.S. Pat. No. 7,030,777 issued to Nelson et al. provides a cone-mounted roadway incursion alert system. A series of the devices are mounted onto traffic cones positioned around a construction zone. When an approaching car physically hits one of the cones, an impact sensor in the device sends a warning message to the construction workers about the potential danger posed to them by the car.
U.S. Published Application 2008/0125970 issued to Scheckler discloses a traffic safety pylon with a GPS-locating and RF-signaling capability. A radio transmitter sends a signal to a central dispatcher for the location of the pylon based on the GPS unit contained in the pylon. See also U.S. Pat. No. 7,195,370 issued to Riblett et al.
Therefore, providing an electronic lighted safety marker system used by emergency responders to warn motorists on roadways to avoid an accident scene, and that can be deployed by such emergency responders with minimal risk to their own personal safety would be highly beneficial. Such safety marker system should simultaneously provide adequate prior warnings to motorists of the stationary accident scene, and to the emergency responders of reckless incoming motorists that may represent their own safety hazard to the emergency responder.